After some disappointing results in 2016 – with less than 50 million admissions outside France – French films have found their pace internationally in 2017 with 80.5 million admissions (an average figure for the ten last years) and €468,000,000 in revenue, according to figures unveiled by UniFrance in Paris at the French cinema rendez-vous (in the presence of Culture Minister Françoise Nyssen, Juliette Binoche, who received a French Film Award, and the Italian director Paolo Sorrentino, in attendance with the MyFrenchFilmFestival jury). 

Serge Toubiana and Isabelle Giordano (read the interview here), president and chief executive officer of UniFrance respectively, welcomed in particular the fact that French films recorded more admissions abroad than in France for the fourth time in six years (in 2017, French productions racked up 78.19 million admissions in France, a market share of 37.4% of the 209.2 million total admissions recorded by the CNC). 

Another positive sign is that , representing 47% of international French cinema admissions in the past year, despite an English language film (Valerian [+lee también:
tráiler
ficha de la película] by Luc Besson with 30.6 million admissions) dominating the 2017 box office. There was also a decent variety of genres, with the annual top five including the comedy drama Two is a Family [+lee también:
tráiler
making of
ficha de la película] by Hugo Gélin, the thriller Overdrive [+lee también:
tráiler
ficha de la película] by Antonio Negret, the animated feature film The Jungle Bunch 3D [+lee también:
tráiler
ficha de la película] by David Alaux and the auteur film Elle [+lee también:
crítica
tráiler
ficha de la película] by Paul Verhoeven. A variety that has allowed 76 French films to exceed more than 100,000 admissions abroad in 2017, even if there was a fairly high concentration on major titles (64% of admissions going to the top five titles in the rankings). Despite groups dominating admissions via exporters (EuropaCorp, Gaumont and SND in the lead) and producers (EuropaCorp also leading), independent companies also fared well, with Wild Bunch, Kinology, Memento and Playtime in the top activity sector, and Quad, Vendôme and CG in the second.

In terms of the geography of French film admissions abroad, Western Europe came out on top in 2017 (for the second year running), with almost 24.7 million admissions (with Germany topping the rankings), ahead of Asia (where China leads the way internationally in terms of admissions for French films), Central Europe and Eastern Europe (a net increase to 16% of the total number of French cinema admissions abroad), North America (with the United States in second place overall by country) and Latin America (10.5 million admissions, with very good results in Mexico, among others).